Health Care Services Corp., doing business as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, is the state’s leading health insurer with 47 percent of the commercial market. Together with WellPoint Inc., they control 69 percent of the state market.
Wellpoint Inc., which operates locally under the Unicare brand, said it will exit Illinois and Texas...Wellpoint said its Illinois Unicare customers, largely in the Chicago area, will be guaranteed coverage if they transition to Chicago-based Health Care Service Corp., parent of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois...
Miles Zaremski writes here individually and not on behalf of anyone but himself. He was the longest serving chair (5 years) of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Medical Professional Liability. He was also the first non MD-JD president of the American College of Legal Medicine (an association of professionals formally organized nearly 50 years ago by those principally possessing both the medical and law degrees). Mr. Zaremski is not a member of any trial lawyers association and does not represent injured persons, even though he has been in health care law and policy now for 36 years. Read more from Miles Zaremski at his blog on the Huffington Post.
I am appalled to read in the story, "Doclors and Lawyers", that, "Medical malpractice reform has to be part of health-care reform". I have studied the effects of malpractice litigation on the health care system for nearly 40 years, and can say without hesitation that medical malpractice has a negligible impact on the costs of health care in our country. To be more precise, as reported by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, National Health Statistics Group (1960-2007); U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis; U.S. Bureau of the Census; and "Property/Casualty Insurance Industry Aggregates", Medical Malpractice Direct Premiums Written (Nat'l. Assoc. of Ins. Commissioners, 1992-2007), medical malpractice costs, as measured by medical malpractice premiums in 2006 - - - the most recent year for which all the necessary data to make comparisons is available - - - accounted for only .58 percent of overall health care costs. This is contained in a letter of record sent to Rep. Henry Waxman, Chr. of the U.S. House's Committee on Energy and Commerce, on July 29 by the American Bar Association.
Second, your article also talks about the costs of so-called defensive medicine - - - ordering up more tests and procedures than are necessary. In a 1992 Congressional Budget Office Report "The Economic Implications of Rising Health Care Costs" (October 1992, p.27), the CBO stated that such procedures would have been provided anyway, for reasons other than concerns about medical malpractice litigation. And, in 2004, the CBO also stated in, "Limiting Tort Liability for Medical Malpractice" (Economic and Budget Issue Brief (Jan. 8, 2004, at p.6), that the savings from reducing defensive medicine would be "very small".
Finally, as is mentioned in the article on attorneys and physicians, there is a continuing mantra of what limiting noneconomic damages does for physician malpractice premiums on an annual basis. Bunk. Truth be told, however, the costs of health care in states with, and without, such caps remains incredibly high and continues to soar. Moreover, doctors' malpractice premiums spike once or so every decade (at least since the time I started studying this topic going back to the 1960s). The timing of these spikes coincides with a downturn in what the financial markets provide as returns to the insurance industry on their investments. Thus, don't be surprised that the lower the return on investment, the higher the premiums for professional malpractice premiums will be for doctors.
As with other elements in the current health care debate, much has been shown to be false, misleading, overstatements, and, in the end, nothing but attempts to instill fear in the general population without fact. That which is suggested in the article about the need to reform medical malpractice laws as part of the health care reform debate is just more of the same.
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Note: The public option is essential to protecting the doctor-patient relationship. Three United States Supreme Court decisions in which I have been involved have had before them facts involving managed care companies making decisions for the attending doctor that harmed the patient. These cases are: Pegram v. Herdrich, Aetna v. Davila, and Cigna v. Calad. In the Herdrich case, Justice Souter (now retired) stated that "eligibility decisions and treatment decisions (are) inextricably mixed, as they are in countless medical administrative decisions every day". A public plan is designed not to allow what goes on every single day NOW - as shown by these three cases.
Andy Kurz has over 12 years executive level experience in finance and risk management, including CFO for a Midwest Blue Cross and Blue Shield Insurer. Retired now, he had decades of involvement with financial applications and analytical software.
Many seniors have become fearful that cutting excess costs means cutting benefits. Medicare’s own data highlights differences between about 20% of states with the lowest costs and 20% of states with the highest costs. Cost of living explains some of the differences. But 71% higher physician and clinical service costs for essentially the same results suggests there are billions of dollars being spent with little or no added benefit.
Medicare Spending Discrepancies
States (all data from 2004 Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services)
Population
Medicare Spending
For Similar Results
26 states and the District of Columbia – combined Medicare population 17.9 million
Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming
20% of ALL Medicare Recipients in the U.S.
$12.5 billion in physician and clinical services
For every $100 spent on physician and clinical services in this group ...
California, District of Columbia, Florida, Nevada, New Jersey
Five insurance producer associations are planning a joint lobbying effort ... on health care reform in the nation's capital...
... they will host a special joint health care reform Capitol Hill fly-in July 14-15.
With both the House and Senate poised to consider health care reform legislation in late July, the groups see this event as an opportunity for them to voice their opposition to the creation of a public plan that would [?] against private insurance companies in the health insurance marketplace.
Where do they get the money to fight health care reform?
In this country, 87 million people went uninsured in the past two years. The rest of the industrialized nations spend far less than we do per person and they manage to cover everyone. How can they afford to do this?
We can cover everyone for less than we are paying now. (In fact, we could cover everyone in the U.S. and Canada for less than we are paying now.) We don't need to spend more for a better health care system. We need the money we are already spending to go to people who want to provide care, not make a profit.
I've already forwarded this link around. The video pokes fun at right-wing scare talk about fixing the health care mess - you know, the corporate insurance extravaganza that is ravaging millions of families and keeping the economy down.
The video underscores the consistent refusal of the Republican Party to speak to the American people as if we are adults.
On a related note, State Senator Matt Murphy is apparently going to run for Illinois governor. Several months ago I asked Senator Murphy how he would balance the budget. His answer: tax cuts.
(I also asked about HB 311. After I explained that it was for single-payer health care, he said he was against it.)
Update 9/27/09: since the original posting, an updated CBPP report shows the number of states with shortfalls has risen to 48 and the total deficit anticipated for the next fiscal year, 2010, is $168 billion.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, of 50 states, 47 face budget shortfalls over the next few years. The total budget shortfall for all states for fiscal year 2009 is $106 billion. Because states cannot run deficits, sharp and immediate cutbacks in social services and infrastructure are often seen. But these measures can be false economies, taking down systems that make our communities good places to live.
Last week, Congress passed another war supplemental funding bill. There was maybe a week of debate over some of the issues - but the outcome was never in doubt. Nothing like the pitched battle going on over whether we will join the rest of the civilized world and institute universal health care. The amount of the appropriation - $106 billion.
WASHINGTON - Doctors and other advocates of a national single-payer health system - also known as an improved Medicare for All - directly confronted senators at a Senate Finance Committee "roundtable" on health reform today.
One-by-one, eight single-payer advocates in the audience stood up during the opening comments of the hearing and asked why single-payer experts were being excluded from the proceedings. They each spoke out in turn until they were removed from the committee hearing room and arrested, one-by-one, by U.S. Capitol police.
The doctors and others said that a publicly funded, privately delivered single-payer system is the only solution to the crisis plaguing our nation's non-system of health care, noting that single-payer national health insurance would guarantee coverage for everyone and contains costs.
Despite polling that shows a clear majority of public and physician support for a single-payer system, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, has stated on multiple occasions that single payer is "off the table" of health reform.
Today's round table, the second of three, consisted of 15 witnesses with no single-payer advocates among them. By contrast, several witnesses have direct ties to the for-profit, private health insurance industry.
"Health insurance administrators are practicing medicine without a medical license," said Dr. Margaret Flowers, co-chair of Maryland chapter of PNHP. "The result is the suffering and death of thousands of patients for the sake of private profit. The private health insurance industry has a solid grip on patients, providers and legislators. It is time to stand up and declare that health care is a human right."
Much to the frustration of Baucus, the multiple disruptions demanding single-payer be on the table set the tone for the second of three roundtables on Health Reform by the Senate Finance Committee.
Katie Robbins, assistant national coordinator of Healthcare-NOW, said: "The current discussion on health reform is political theater at its best. Our elected officials are hosting these events to go through the motions of what developing effective national health policy should look like. There is a big difference between getting health policy experts in the room and the witnesses here today who would profit the most from reform. That difference means our hard-earned dollars will go to further insurance industry profits, not to guarantee health care to the American people."
"It's a pretty spectacular display of raw political power," said Russell Mokhiber of Single Payer Action. "The health insurance industry demands that not one of the 15 people who testified today shall be a single-payer advocate. And the industry gets what it wants. It's time for the American people to storm the gates and demand - put single payer on the table."
Single payer is successfully implemented in the United States' own Medicare system providing comprehensive care to the elderly, as well as in many of the best health care systems in the world. A single-payer system, as embodied in legislation H.R. 676 and S. 703, would provide guaranteed, quality care to all Americans with no increase in U.S. health spending.
The single-payer advocates said they will continue to use direct actions and nonviolent civil disobedience to urge the inclusion of a publicly funded, privately delivered system.
Other methods of communication with elected officials have failed in delivering the demand for single-payer national health care as evidenced by the exclusion of single-payer advocates from official hearings on health reform.
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Comment: The Capitol police got it wrong. They should have hauled away the lobbyists and seated the doctors who came to speak on behalf of the thousands in this country who die every year from lack of insurance and millions who are bankrupted or foreclosed because of medical bills.
P.S.: C-Span video of the entire hearing below. Note Senatorial banter as people call for consideration of single-payer:
Baucus: The comments are out of order. This may cause us to recess until the police can restore order. Grassley: I would do it right now. ... Baucus: We need more police. Grassley: Isn't there someplace they can watch it on television? ... Kerry: Is there anybody in the audience who didn't come to ... ?
Remember the series of reports that came out in July on lack of competition in the health insurance market from Health Care for America Now (HCAN)? The report on Illinois stated, 
